2) Make your own video for Will! Actually, provide your own audio track. I created the video and audio in about 30 minutes. I’m looking for people who can come up with a better audio track for the video, come up with something funny, something sad, something crazy, I don’t care! Just download the original WMV file (right click, save as) for the video and remove the audio, add your own. Then upload it to YouTube or Vimeo, and tweet the link to the video with #Collars4Will in the message. http://cjh.am/strohlc

Today’s blog is going to be to “correct” the blog posted last night. I used google voice transcription to post, and it didn’t exactly get what I wanted. First you should read the original post over here.

And here’s what I really said

“Hmmmm so here I am driving home from El Toro and I realize that it is day 100 of blogging every day this year I need to get a blog post done. I don't have a computer handy so I need to go ahead and use the audio features on my android phone. I meant to get the blog post done today while I was at the event site but I was unable to do so today, so I have to get day 100 of 365 done. I will go back and edit this blog post to accurately convert the proper word on day 101 but for now you have to try to translate what google really thought I meant verses what I actually said”

Mmm so here I am driving home from el toro and I realize they 100 up by blogging every day this year I need to get a blog post done I don't have a computer handy so I need to go ahead you the audio features on my android phone I meant to get the blog post done today while I was at the event site but I was unable to do so today watch football have to do for day 103 165 I will go back and edit this blog post to accurately convert the proper word on day 101 but for now you have to try to translate what google really thought I meant verses what I actually said

So today I did some testing with UStream and the FM Audio Broadcast at the El Toro ProSolo. I think I managed to come up with a way to broadcast the announce stream out on the internet (audio only) using UStream.

I setup a new “Channel” for the ProSolo on Ustream, we’ll see how it works out tomorrow, but if you want, give it a listen by going to (only active during competition, and if it works)

For those of you who have known me for a while this won’t come as a surprise. I suffer from Automotive ADHD (attention deficit hyperactive disorder), and it is just getting worse!

oyNatalie and I are in car shopping mode, we’re looking to downsize from our 2008 F250 FX4, while we love the truck, it is just far too big for our lives in California. We recently sold our horse trailer that we had been trying to sell for a while now. Now that the trailer is gone, we are ready to part with the truck.

So we’re looking at what to get. Natalie would like a 4 door wagon, with room for a stroller (or the dogs) in the back, the baby in the back seat, and us up front. We’re thinking that we would like to find a used BMW 5 series to fill that role, though figuring out what year/mileage is something we haven’t decided yet.

One thought we are having is that perhaps it might be a good idea to trade the Z in on a 4 door car for myself as well. I test drove a 2011 Mitsubishi Evolution today, oh boy, daddy like!

I wouldn’t buy a new Evo, they are far too costly, but I would considering getting a used one and then perhaps an older (2000-2003) 5-series for Natalie. I went to check out a couple of used 2008 Evo’s at a dealer down in San Jose today but immediately noticed that they were both modified, which totally turns me off. I don’t want to get into a modified car again, I’d rather buy something that is completely stock and if I want to modifiy it do it myself.

So we’ll see where this bout with my latest batch of AADHD takes us.

Don’t believe me that I have a problem? Here’s a list of the cars I and Natalie have owned over the past 5 years.

So last year, shortly after I moved from St. Louis to Denver, I went back to St. Louis to present at the 2nd St. Louis Day of .Net. Now, having moved from Colorado to California I’m headed back to St. Louis again. Once again presenting at the St. Louis Day of .Net, August 20-21, 2010. I will be presenting my crowd favorite DotNetNuke Best Practices session, the same one, possibly tweaked a bit, I delivered in Toronto in May. This session always seems to go over well with DNN people, old and new alike.

There are a few other “big name” DotNetNuke speakers who are also rumored to be attending and submitting sessions for this year’s Day of .Net. They are still taking speaker submissions (deadline unknown?), so if you want to present a DotNetNuke session be sure to get your submissions in quick!

If you aren’t up for speaking at the event you can still attend! What good are speakers if there is no audience? Get working on your boss/employer now, start the thought process of getting them to pay for the event. At the $125 price you are going to see a plethora of great sessions about DotNetNuke and other great topics.

If you can get away from work for the event (it’s actually a two day event) I highly encourage you to check out the St. Louis Day of .Net.

So the big scary electrical gremlins in the Audi were an easy fix. The ignition key gets stuck a little too far forward sometimes, so as long as everytime I start the car I turn the key back in the running position everything works fine! Yay for the easy fixes.

I thought the car was burning oil, when we got it it was 2qts low, then yesterday the oil light came on so I threw some in quickly. Today I got the oil changed (for free with a coupon, score) and they did a minor inspection of the car, found an oil leak. They want $220 to replace the oil pan gasket. Yeah right, I'm not spending that! I'll do it myself sometime soon. Also need to get that windshield replaced soon too, but I think I might try to last through winter.

9:18AM: I’ll be updating this blog post as I can throughout Shaun’s Keynote, so refresh the page to see if you have the latest info! Shaun’s Keynote starts in 45 minutes (10am PST) so I’ll come back at that time and start adding content as he spits it out.

10:02AM: Shaun is up on stage getting ready to start. I’m recording, or attempting to, using my recorder to try to post the audio for the session tonight on DNNVoice.com

So OpenForce 09 is starting up. Scott Guthrie (The Gu) is doing his ASP.NET 4.0/VS 2010 presentation, the main keynote for Tuesday morning here in Las Vegas.

Most everyone got to Vegas yesterday and immediately those of us on Twitter started to locate each other and get together to say hello to old friends, meet new ones, and get some food! For those of you who have never been to the west coast, you may not have ever heard of In-N-Out Burger. It’s a chain, I believe all owned by the same family, primarily in California, though there are a few locations in Arizona, Nevada and one in Utah. I organized a gathering to head over to the one not far from the hotel Monday at noon. Unfortunately I spent Monday morning here in Vegas at a dentist due to some pain that started as soon as I got off the plane. The rest of the guys met up and caught a cab or two over to In-N-Out for lunch, I was able to catch a cab from the dentist and meet up with everyone who made it over there for lunch.

I had a great time introducing everyone to the wonders of In-n-Out, I’m not sure if they liked the food or not, but I sure did. I try to make it there at least once every time I come to Vegas for OpenForce. After that we walked back to the hotel, catching up on everyone’s happenings since the last time we were together. The rest of the afternoon was spent getting checked into the conference and locating people as they arrived for the week. I don’t know how many people are actually registered for the DNN side of the conference but most of my friends are here, so I’m enjoying the people. That is why I actually love the conferences, the people, catching up, meeting new, and just geeking out over things with everyone else.

Monday night some of us met up and went to Burger Bar for dinner. If you want to see what everyone is doing this week be sure to check out Twitter, you can search for the hash tag #OpenForce as a lot of us are tweeting about events and such.

This is the first day for the conference, things are just getting started, as they do I’ll post more (assuming I can get a solid internet connection). I may end up playing with a new toy I got this week, a Motorola Droid, to see if I can use that for my internet connection here at the conference, with 2500 people at the conference the free Wiki right now isn’t holding up to well. Which could become an issue for me during my presentation tomorrow about interacting with Facebook using DNN. We’ll see how that goes ;)

Shaun’s keynote starts at 10am PST, so I’ll try to blog again during/after that session to let people know about all the new announcements! Stay tuned for some cool things.

Also be sure to check out our DNNVoice Podcast later tonight, I’m going to be doing audio blurbs from people here at OpenForce throughout the day and trying to get a short file uploaded each night. Not a full blown podcast like Tom and I try to do (somewhat frequently). We’ll see how the internet connection holds out for that as well!

So this weekend was the first weekend with the car, lots of effort put into it, 250 miles driven today, and lots of Gremlins found! So let's start in order.

Friday afternoon Natalie and I headed down to the DMV to get the title and registration taken care of on the Audi, we also hoped to take care of our licenses as well. First thing we figure out when we walk in the door is that you can't do your license and registration in the same place. What? Colorado, hello, what's the deal? (we learned why later).

So here we are, a new domain, a new project and a new car! This car, while a "project" isn't a project like that other car is.

Since we moved to Colorado we figured it would be a good idea if we had AWD/4wd vehicles, so we sold our 2004 F350 and traded in our 2004 GMC Envoy for a 2008 F250 FX4 last week. That put us down to a one (running) vehicle family, I couldn't take it! I'd been looking around for a while for another ride and came across this Audi not even 5 minutes from our house. It's got just under 130k miles.

With the success last night I decided I had to work on the car this evening a bit. The first thing I did was get it up on all four jack stands so that they were under the frame and not under control arms of the car. This would allow me to begin working on the suspension pieces.

When I got the car from Jeff, uhhh over three years ago now, it came with a second suspension that had been pulled off another car. This other suspension has springs (yellow), new(er) struts, a larger front sway bar, and also the addition of a rear sway bar. It also is a lot cleaner then the current suspension. So tonight I started pulling off the front suspension, starting with the sway bar, and moving on to removing the rest, at least what I could, of the right front.

I got stuck at the tie rod, but I did manage to get most of the other bolts removed. I came to a conclusion though, I’m going to likely just drop the whole front suspension out, including the cross member as the second suspension has one as well. In order to do that though I am going to have to dismount the motor. I will attempt to do that by lifting the motor up off the mounts with the cherry picker, hopefully without having to disconnect the transmission and not removing the whole thing from the car.

Before I do that though I will likely fully disassemble the other suspension and take it to a friend’s house to sandblast everything. I’m heading to Tampa for a conference tomorrow, so that will have to wait until the evenings next week. I’ll try to get everything disassembled during the week, both front and rear suspensions, and then probably go down to his place Saturday if he’ll be around.

So tonight after work I came home to get the starter out of the car and took it back to Autozone, fortunately the lifetime warranty was honored! Though I did have to run off to the Autozone Hub to get the replacement starter. The guy at the hub was kind of lost, but he eventually got everything worked out and I headed home with the new (remanufactured) starter.

So the last starter started off working, but after a few days just started spinning without engaging the flywheel, no grinding either. This one, once all wired up worked like a champ. I even got the car started up for a minute or so. I did all this without hooking up the computer, so I didn’t want to spend too much time keeping it running.

So now was the time, time to hookup the laptop and get the video camera out and record the car actually running! Well I am proud to say it was successful, here’s the video below.

Dave and I spent the day working on the Corvette. Here's what was accomplished
drain the rear end and replace with Redline gear oil
removed the rear Konis from the car and replace with the stock shocks
drained the transmission and replaced with redline
drained/replace oil and filter, both with Mobil 1
hack the stock radio to add a line in
wash the car, clean off all of Dave's cone marks
#5 and #6 were done by myself, Dave had left by then. #5 involved splicing into the CD input line and wiring up a minijack input, I actually wired this into the back of the radio, I thought it was ingenius, but I figured out the error in my ways. The jack I used was one that when nothing was plugged into it would allow the CD audio to pass through normally. When a line was plugged in the jack input is used and the CD Audio is bypassed. Anyone see the err of my ways?
By mounting the jack in the back of the radio I effectively disabled the CD audio from working until the radio is removed and the minijack wire unplugged. This actually isn't a big deal for me, I never use the CD player anyways, and now I can listen to my Zune! Though I will most likely need to rewire or just unplug this before I sell the car, otherwise the next owner won't know WTF is going on.
Now it's time for a http://shirt.woot.com party, I'm meeting some guys from the office there. Race on Sunday!

So the CorvetteZ06.org Team took 9 runs today at the National Tour here in Bunker Hill Indiana. 2 out of those 9 runs were clean, the rest were DNFs and coned runs. Here's a quick overview of what I can remember
Dave
Run 1 (Cones)
Run 2 (Cones)
Run 3 (DNF Cones)
Chris
Run 1 (DNF Cones)
Run 2 (Cone) fast enough for 5th or 6th if clean
Run 3 (Cones)
Beth
Run 1 (Cones)
Run 2
Run 3
I am sitting in 9th, Dave in 11th, Beth in 3rd in SSL.
I've reviewed my video from Run #1, and I don't see anywhere that I DNF'd the course, I did spin through the finish and hit a cone or two, but it sure doesn't look like I left the course at anytime.
Right now tomorrow for Dave and I is just for fun, to see how well we can do in the car after a bad Saturday. I've got video from all the runs today, though it looks like the audio didn't record, I will have to check that out in the morning to make sure we get audio of tomorrows runs.

Natalie and I were planning on heading off tonight to see Indiana Jones, but ran into a wall. We both crashed and fell asleep after a long day. I woke up and now am getting caught up on a the Elite XC fight that I set to record tonight on CBS. This is a first for MMA as they have a national audience on network TV. It will be interesting to see what the response is.

Chris Hammond, 5th place after day 1. Woulda been 4th in final trophy spot but had a cone call on the corner sheets that no one knew about till audit. Still not far back from 4th, 2 tenths maybe. Going out to dinner with the guy in 4th tonight, plan, get him wasted.

As some of you may know, I have political aspirations sometime in my future. I don't know what, or how far I want to go, but I've always managed to keep myself clean and without skeletons in my closet so that I could ultimately run for office some day.

The older I get the more I have this desire. Today I'm sitting here listening to CNN.com's audio feed of the Supreme Court's discussion of the ban on handguns in Washington DC. This is some interesting stuff. I'm a supporter of the Second Amendment and believe that it is everyone's right to own firearms. Listening to the discussion about the issue at hand is very interesting. I've honestly never listened to such a debate before, it leads me to think: I probably need to take some debate classes if I really want to pursue politics in the near future.

Tonight I told myself I wouldn't start the car, I would get ready for my trip to Chicago tomorrow (going up there to give two days of DotNetNuke training classes).
But I couldn't help myself, I had to get the camera and record the new exhaust! It's not quiet, but oh it sounds so sweet!
Here's a 2mb WAV file of the car running
Here's a large WMV video of the same...

Tonight I told myself I wouldn't start the car, I would get ready for my trip to Chicago tomorrow (going up there to give two days of DotNetNuke training classes).
But I couldn't help myself, I had to get the camera and record the new exhaust! It's not quiet, but oh it sounds so sweet!
Here's a 2mb WAV file of the car running
Here's a large WMV video of the same...

Last night I returned the Vertical sander that I had purchased from Sears that was broken when I removed it from the box. I got a replacement sander and brought it home to install. I setup the webcam on the wall, right above the work bench, and got to work assembling the sander.
5-10 minutes later I was ready to start sanding on the aluminum I had cut with a jig saw the day before to make a blockoff plate for my AAC valve on the intake manifold. I tell you what, a vertical sander is a fun thing to have! Here's the result of what I was making, though I'm still going to drill a hole in it and tap that hole for the temperature sensor I'll be mounting in the intake manifold.
I also got to use my new drill press to drill the holes in the plate, it all worked really darn well.
After getting the plate made I decided it was time to remove the intake manifold from the car so I could tap and fill some of the holes on the manifold that I don't need to use. I brough the webcam with me and mounted it directly above the motor on the chery picker. I started removing bolts, then decided to read the haynes, it told me I need to remove the Turbo and a few other things to get the manifold removed, I guess I should of planned things a bit better and done most of this work BEFORE I put the engine back in the car, it sure would be a lot easier to get to.
Once I realized how much I had to remove to get the manifold off I decided I didn't want to do all that last night, it was nearly 10pm by then. So I moved to the other side of the motor, bringing the camera with me to the other side. Andy and I decided last week to remove the attachments for the oil cooler for now, I'm going to attempt to get the car running without the cooler for now, and reinstall it down the road as I don't have all the hardware for it.
So I started removing it last night, got it removed, and then saw that without the attachment there isn't a way to mount the oil filter to the block. So tonight I'll be attempting to remove the oil filter attachment from the parts motor (78 l28e) to see if I can use it on the 83 L28ET.
After all this I decided it was time to head inside and play with the cool video I had shot last night, only to realize that I had click on the record audio button, instead of record video. So yet again, there isn't any video to be had :(
Tonight though I promise I'll do my best to get it right and have a video to post of the evenings...

Last night I returned the Vertical sander that I had purchased from Sears that was broken when I removed it from the box. I got a replacement sander and brought it home to install. I setup the webcam on the wall, right above the work bench, and got to work assembling the sander.
5-10 minutes later I was ready to start sanding on the aluminum I had cut with a jig saw the day before to make a blockoff plate for my AAC valve on the intake manifold. I tell you what, a vertical sander is a fun thing to have! Here's the result of what I was making, though I'm still going to drill a hole in it and tap that hole for the temperature sensor I'll be mounting in the intake manifold.
I also got to use my new drill press to drill the holes in the plate, it all worked really darn well.
After getting the plate made I decided it was time to remove the intake manifold from the car so I could tap and fill some of the holes on the manifold that I don't need to use. I brough the webcam with me and mounted it directly above the motor on the chery picker. I started removing bolts, then decided to read the haynes, it told me I need to remove the Turbo and a few other things to get the manifold removed, I guess I should of planned things a bit better and done most of this work BEFORE I put the engine back in the car, it sure would be a lot easier to get to.
Once I realized how much I had to remove to get the manifold off I decided I didn't want to do all that last night, it was nearly 10pm by then. So I moved to the other side of the motor, bringing the camera with me to the other side. Andy and I decided last week to remove the attachments for the oil cooler for now, I'm going to attempt to get the car running without the cooler for now, and reinstall it down the road as I don't have all the hardware for it.
So I started removing it last night, got it removed, and then saw that without the attachment there isn't a way to mount the oil filter to the block. So tonight I'll be attempting to remove the oil filter attachment from the parts motor (78 l28e) to see if I can use it on the 83 L28ET.
After all this I decided it was time to head inside and play with the cool video I had shot last night, only to realize that I had click on the record audio button, instead of record video. So yet again, there isn't any video to be had :(
Tonight though I promise I'll do my best to get it right and have a video to post of the evenings...

Well Natalie, Auntie Carol and I made it on TV tonight. We went down to Fenway to get a few Red Sox jackets today. We figured it would be easier to buy them today rather than fighting the opening day crowds tomorrow.
After the jackets we went into the ticket office because Carol wanted to try to find some printed schedules. On our way out of the ticket office the guy from Channel 5 news was there, I made eye contact with him and could tell he was ready to ask a question. Natalie ran away but I grabbed Auntie Carol and we reeled Natalie back into the fold. He asked us a few questions about if we had just gotten tickets, if we were big fans, etc.
We got home right at 5pm so we turned on the news. After the 5 o'clock news we figured perhaps we weren't going to make it on the air. Well about 25 minutes into the 6 o'clock news we ended up on TV! We did get it taped with the VCR, now the task is to get it digitized, though it'll probably take a few days as i'll have to make a dupe of the VCR tape and take it home to STL, then digitize it there.
The clip was mostly me, but also cut to Auntie Carol when she said we went to Game 4 in St. Louis in 2004, then it cut back to me and the sportscaster cut over the audio and said "before you come to any conclusions this is his aunt, and this is his new wife" after going to a shot of Natalie.
Natalie's goal for Opening Day is to make it on TV...

This will be the last DNN Daily Tip for the week. I'm headed to Denver tomorrow for a race this weekend and meetings with a client on Monday, so I'll likely not post again until I return.
What's today's tip? It's a special one ;) Upgrade to the latest version of DotNetNuke, 4.3.3/3.3.3! The 4.3.3 package dropped late yesterday afternoon and DotNetNuke.com was upgraded to this "final release" early this morning. What is the 3.3.3 release? It's basically the same release as 4.3.3 but for the .Net 1.1 Framework, 4.3.3 is for the 2.0 platform.
Some of the items that the 4.3.3/3.3.3 release include. If you're not running on the 2.0 framework yet, I'd highly recommend looking into it. I've started moving all of my sites over from 1.1 to 2.0 with the latest few releases of DNN.
Membership ManagementCAPTCHA - add the ability to display a small image with embedded text which bots can not read. Prevents brute force dictionary login attacks.Login Redirect - after login there is now a way to redirect a user to a specific pagePassword Generation - the ability for an admin to automatically generate a secure password for a user on account creationHttpContext - eliminate dependence on HttpContextPublic Registration - the system sends an email to the user on public registration ( to prevent cases where another user registers with their email address )Profile Change Notification - when any profile attribute is changed, the owner of the account is notified ( using the original email address ). This is to alert people in the event that an unauthorized user has gained access to their account and made changes to their profile ( password, email ). User Account Creation Notification - when an admin creates a user account they have an option to send the account details to the userForce Profile Update - ability to force a user to update their user profileForce Password Change - ability to force a user to change their passwordPassword Complexity - added the ability to define some passord complexity requirements ( ie. mixed upper/lower case, numeric and alpha-numeric, etc... )Display Name Field - the membership schema stores the DisplayName of the user for demographic purposes - this item is critical for international users where their name is not represented as "FirstName LastName". Modules should link to the DisplayName for audit purposes rather than using FirstName and LastName.Preserve Login Parameters - when a user is directed to the login screen, the system retains the original url ( with parameters ) so that it can redirect back after successful login ( especially useful in nested module UIs like Forum )Logout Behavior - after logging out, the user remains on the same page rather than being redirected to the home page ( the only reason they are being redirected now is because they may no longer have access to the page because of roles - but this is largely unnecessary and is handled other ways ).Automated Verified Registration URL - the email sent to user when using he Verified Registration process now contains a URL which a user can click to very quickly validate their accountUser Lockout Notification - enhance the user lockout ( 3 unsuccessful logins ) to send an email to the admin to notify them of the event
Role ManagementEffective Date - effective date is used to specify when a role becomes active ( we already had ExpiryDate which specifies when role access terminates )RSVP code - this is a code which can be assigned to a role which would allow a user to obtain access to thge role if they entered the RSVP value. A use case would be an administrator working with a group of users could send them an RSVP code which they could then enter on the site to get instant access, rather than the admin having to assign the users to roles manuallyAvatar field - the administrator should be able to associate an avatar to a role.Role Groups - administration mechanism to group roles within the same portal to provide a faster, easier way to...

Chris Hammond is

Chris Hammond is a father, husband, leader, developer and car guy. Chris has long specialized in ASP.NET and DotNetNuke development, so you will find a variety of topics here on the website. For more information check out the about me page.